An enterprise information system (EIS) provides an information infrastructure to an enterprise in a client-server computer system configuration. An EIS offers a set of services to its clients. These services are exposed to clients as local and/or remote interfaces. A resource manager is a software module that manages a set of shared EIS resources. For example, a transactional resource manager can participate in transactions that are externally controlled and coordinated by a transaction manager.
A resource adapter is a system level software driver provided along with an EIS connector and is specific to an underlying EIS. A resource adapter is used by an application server or an application client to connect to the EIS. The resource adapter plugs into an application server and collaborates with the application server to provide the underlying mechanisms-transactions, security, and connection pooling.
There is currently no existing standard mechanism for deploying and configuring resource adapters in a managed application server environment. Each vendor has its own specific mechanism, making it difficult to achieve off-the-shelf pluggability of resource adapters in an application server. For application developers who design and implement application servers, the result is an enormous amount of duplicated or nearly duplicated effort expended to customize resource adapters into a specific client server configuration.
There is a need for a method of packaging a resource adapter in a client server environment such that the resource adapter is easily ported to different systems and applications.